Introduction to the Special Issue: Nuclear Power in East Asia

Asian Perspective 39 (2015), 555-558 Introduction to the Special Issue: Nuclear Power in East Asia Tilman Ruff Nearly five years after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, with the largest planned share of new nuclear power reactors antici­ pated to be built in Asia, it is timely to survey the status and chal­ lenges of nuclear power in East Asia. The articles in this special issue of Asian Perspective grew out of the international,work­ shop, Nuclear Power in East Asia: The Costs and Benefits, con­ vened by Peter Van Ness at the Australian National University in Canberra on August 12-14, 2014. The workshop aimed to identify what is really at stake in the vitally important decisions being made in many countries with respect to nuclear power. This spe­ cial issue, like the workshop, provides perspectives from various disciplines, key to a comprehensive assessment and evidencebased policy. Andrew Blakers provides an inspiring current overview of sus­ tainable energy options. He describes the uniquely vast and ubiq­ uitous nature of solar energy, and its minimal security, military, environmental, and accident risks. He underlines the rapid and continuing price reductions in photovoltaics (PV) and wind energy that have seen renewables become the majority of new generation capacity installed in recent years. A feasible threefold increase in the 2015 deployment rate of PV and wind alone could turn current world electricity production completely renewable by 2035. Tatsujiro Suzuki reviews nuclear power policy issues in Japan after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, identifying key chal­ lenges that must be addressed, whatever the future direction of nuclear power in Japan. The challenges include decommissioning the Fukushima site and restoring affected people’s lives and liveli­ hoods; enhancing safety and security; spent fuel and plutonium stockpile management; waste disposal; human resource develop­ ment; and, above all, restoring public trust. 555 556 Introduction to the Special Issue Amy King and M. V. Ramana examine the conflicts and com­ promises involved in China’s record of implementation of nuclear safety measures in the years since the Fukushima disaster. These are of global importance not only because of the transboundary spread of any uncontrolled release of radioactivity but also because China plans the most rapid construction anywhere of nuclear power reactors and hopes to export nuclear technology to boot. Across the Taiwan Strait, Kuang-Jung Hsu examines the poorly documented and murky history of nuclear power in Tai­ wan. She explains how many of the accidents, neglect of public safety, regulatory failures, and current dilemmas have roots in a secret nuclear weapons program undertaken, with assistance prin­ cipally from Israel, starting in the early 1960s. Richard Tanter analyzes nuclear power plans in Indonesia— the plethora of proposals and announcements, many with scant basis in reality, promoted over four decades by the national nuclear power agency BATAN. He lays out the domestic and international alliances that have enabled this “permanently failing organization” to survive. Here again we have a murky, disturbing, and not widely known nuclear history, this time linking Indone­ sia with Slovakia. As Tanter describes it, the history is entwined with an “informational fog of fantasy” that deflects attention from the substantial domestic opposition to Indonesian nuclear power reactors. Mely Caballero-Anthony and Julius Cesar Trajano explain the state of nuclear power plans in Vietnam (furthest advanced), Malaysia, and Indonesia, and the norms, framework, and opportu­ nities provided by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in the fields of nuclear power and nonproliferation. They highlight the need to fill substantial gaps that exist in vari­ ous combinations in all three countries regarding the institutions and capacity needed for each aspect of nuclear power, from assessment and planning, construction and operation, and disas­ ter preparedness to decommissioning and waste management. Humanity is facing a perfect storm—needing to drastically and rapidly curtail climate disruption, and remove from our increasingly resource-strained and cyber-wired world the daily Tilman Ruff 557 possibility of nuclear war. Achieving both objectives is not optional but preconditional if we are to survive and enable future generations to share any kind of healthy, sustainable future. Pre­ venting nuclear war requires achieving and sustaining the eradi­ cation of nuclear weapons. And this means ceasing the...